


Unrequitedness

by hjea



Category: Fringe
Genre: Babies, F/M, Post-Bloodline, Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-02
Updated: 2012-03-02
Packaged: 2017-10-31 23:54:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/349713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hjea/pseuds/hjea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lincoln figures it's time to come clean to Olivia. Coming clean to a new mother just means he needs to work on his perfect timing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unrequitedness

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted 03/28/11.

He was doing a poor job of convincing himself he wouldn’t regret this. Lincoln stepped up to the door and froze for half a moment, blowing his breath out in a nervous rush. Finally he raised his hand to knock.   
  
  
“Olivia? It’s Lincoln.”   
  
  
“It’s open!” Olivia called from the other side, “come in!”   
  
  
Lincoln stepped through and closed the door behind him, shaking his head at her nerve. “Liv, you think it’s a good idea to keep your door open after everything that happened?”   
  
  
“Well,” Olivia’s voice called from her living room, “I figure with the 24-hour security detail still out there, anyone who makes it through the cavity search is probably all right. Besides, mom just stepped out for a bit so I thought it was easier not to get up.”   
  
  
Lincoln turned the corner and found Olivia propped up among a bunch of pillows, nursing the baby on the couch. “Oh, uh…” his eyes skipped quickly away to a picture on the wall behind her head. “I can come back later if this isn’t a good time.”   
  
  
“Geeze, Linc.” Olivia looked up and rolled her eyes good-naturedly at him. “You helped deliver him. I think we’re past it.”   
  
  
Lincoln didn’t point out that he had stayed due north of the whole proceedings. There was helping the woman you love give birth to another man’s baby, and then there was  _helping_  the woman you love give birth to another man’s baby. He was just grateful that Henry had been there to take the latter option.   
  
  
But he was mostly grateful she was here at all. So he sat.   
  
  
Olivia grinned at him in amusement as he fussed with his own pillows on the chair, and then looked back down at her son. Embarrassment forgotten for the moment, Lincoln also studied the baby as he worked at feeding himself, curled tightly into the task with an intensity that was frankly kind of startling in someone so young.   
  
  
“You know I never, uh, I never pegged you for someone who…” he coughed, and gestured, and Olivia snorted in agreement. “Yeah, me neither. Not that I ever pegged myself for motherhood at all. But the peds nurse and my mom, they suggested that since we didn’t exactly have the full nine months to get to know each other that this might help us bond. And—“ Olivia twitched an articulate shoulder, “It feels weird. But I don’t hate it.”   
  
  
Lincoln watched, and doubted that they really needed that extra help bonding. The baby raised a fist toward her face and Olivia caught it, rubbing the tiny palm gently between her finger and thumb as her whole gaze washed over the baby in her arms. Lincoln recognized that same look in new mothers everywhere: awestruck and all-encompassing, leaving little room for anything else. He looked away.  
  
  
“So Linc…”   
  
  
“Hmm?” Lincoln was actually surprised she had remembered he was still there.   
  
  
“Did you want to—I mean, it’s great if you just came by to visit.”   
  
  
“No, I…” He sighed, “Liv, I wanted to tell you that the Secretary told me everything. Gave me access to your mission files. So I just wanted to let you know that I know. That uh,” he nodded at the baby, “that Peter Bishop is his father.”   
  
  
“Oh.” Olivia looked… embarrassed? Caught out? “Lincoln---“   
  
  
“No, it’s fine. I know you couldn’t tell us, and I know you were just doing the job, but the Secretary told me that Peter wasn’t…” Lincoln sighed and rubbed a hand across his jaw, definitely regretting this after all. “So I guess I just wanted to tell you, and…”   
  
  
He shouldn’t have come. He was too wrapped up in her, too soon after finding all this out, after Chinatown, and everything. But it was too late to stop now.   
  
  
“And ask you  _why_ .”   
  
  
Olivia sighed heavily. She was having trouble looking at him too. “Sleeping with Peter wasn’t strictly part of my orders. But I was supposed to get close to him, and Peter and the other me,” she paused, “…he’s in love with her. So I had to be in love with him too.” Her arms tightened around her son. “I didn’t expect to get pregnant because of it.”   
  
  
“ _Are_  you in love with him?” Lincoln wasn’t actually sure he could stand to hear her answer, but at the same time he couldn’t bear not to ask.   
  
  
“I don’t know.”   
  
  
Lincoln closed his eyes, feeling another chunk of his heart break off for Olivia Dunham.   
  
  
“Lincoln.” Her voice was gentle. Pleading. “Please look at me.” He opened his eyes.   
  
  
“Peter is a good man. And he was so in love with me… with her, that I…” He was trying to keep looking at her, but it was so, so hard. “When he found out, well, he probably hates me. I can’t imagine what he would do if he knew he was a father. But I would have done it again if I thought it could save our universe.”   
  
  
Olivia was staring straight at him, all attention on him, and it was all he could do not to feel bowled over by the depth of feeling in her eyes.   
  
  
“I’m not certain of anything anymore.” Olivia’s voice dropped and he leaned in, head bowed towards hers. “But Lincoln,” she ran a hand down the baby’s back. “My son will not be caught in the crosshairs of a war. I’m going to do anything I can to protect him.”   
  
  
Lincoln let his reply out in a whisper. “Me too, Liv.”   
  
  
Olivia nodded, her shoulders loosening in some kind of relief, and looked down once more at her son. “Okay, you’re done,” she sing-songed, as she eased him away from her front. Lincoln’s eyes shot to the ceiling as she fixed her shirt in place.  
  
  
“Do you want—would you mind holding him for a minute?”   
  
  
Lincoln cautiously lowered his eyes and saw Olivia holding out the baby towards him. “Of course not.” He jumped up, taking the baby from her with two outstretched hands. The baby grunted and shifted in his grasp.   
  
  
“Here.” Olivia handed him a receiving blanket like an afterthought. “He spits up like a champion.”   
  
  
“Uh... right.” Lincoln threw the blanket over one shoulder and awkwardly angled the little body up to rest beside his chin. It unnerved Lincoln how tiny he was. One hand covered his neck and the whole span of his back—an entire person in the length of his forearm. He tried a few experimental jiggles, but the baby just turned his head into his neck and fell into boneless sleep.   
  
  
Olivia stood, stretched, and stepped towards them. Leaning in, she rested one hand on her son’s back, just over Lincoln’s, as she checked on him. Lincoln felt the air in the room close in around him.   
  
  
“This is going to sound awful,” Olivia tilted her chin up, voice low and gaze meeting his apologetically, “but I only slept two hours last night and if he’s going to drop off for a while than I might try and rest. Could you watch him—just until mom gets home?”   
  
  
“’Course.” Lincoln tried with all his heart to show her how serious he was. “I’d do anything for you, Liv. You know that.”   
  
  
“I do. I’m so---“   
  
  
Lincoln winced. “---Don’t say grateful.”   
  
  
“No. God, not grateful. So much more than that.”   
  
  
“Olivia.” Lincoln was flashing back and forth on every moment he had shared with her: the day he met her, the day he kissed her, every shining laughing minute that had been his life since her.   
  
  
“I know that things are… beyond crazy right now, but whatever happens or is going to happen, I am  _here_  for you. Always, okay?”   
  
  
“I know.” Olivia nodded. “I know that now.”   
  
  
She stretched up and kissed him, just once, lips dry against his and the baby dreaming between them. Lincoln breathed in the rush of his feelings, and felt his whole soul begin to sing with possibility. 


End file.
